Deploy Office 2019 using SCCM [Using Office Deployment Tool]

In this post I will cover the steps to deploy Office 2019 using SCCM. Office 2019 is released along with new version of Office Deployment Tool. The Office 2019 is released for both Windows and Mac OS. Recently I published a post on Office 2019 overview and deployment info. Please read that post before you plan to deploy Office 2019 using SCCM. Office 2019 uses only click-to-run installation technology. We know about this because Click-to-Run has been the installation technology for most Office products since the release of Office 2013.

The important question is should i deploy Office 2019 or go with Office 365. First of all if you have deployed Office 365 ProPlus to the users in your organization, you don’t need Office 2019. This is because most of the features introduced in Office 2019 are already covered in Office 365 plans. My preference would be still Office 365 as you get updates frequently. Office 2019 is a software that is available as one time purchase. You can buy it from either online store or through volume license agreement. However you can expect only security updates for Office 2019 in future. Let’s proceed with deploying Office 2019 using Configuration Manager.

Step 1 – Install Office Deployment Tool

Download the office deployment tool from here. Right click the executable and run as administrator. You will now see Microsoft Office 2016 click-to-run administrator tool. Accept the license terms and click Continue.

Create a new folder such as Office 2019 within sources folder and select the folder. Click OK. The executable extracts setup and configuration files inside the selected folder.

There are three files present in the folder.

configuration-Office365-x64.xml

configuration-Office365-x86.xml

setup.exe

Step 2 – Create Configuration File

In the next step create a new text file and rename it as config.xml. Well, you can name it anything but ensure you specify .xml as extension. This file should be in the same folder where the setup and other config files are present. Here is a sample configuration file that you can use it with office deployment tool. In my case I used the below configuration file. This configuration file downloads Office 2019 32-bit version. In addition the previous Windows Installer versions of Office are removed as part of the installation process. The PIDKEY is the product key for MAK activation. You don’t need to use PIDKEY if you’re activating Office 2019 with Key Management Service (KMS).

Step 3 – Download the Office 2019 installation files

In this step we will download Office 2019 installation files. Run the command prompt as administrator. Change the path to Office 2019 folder. Type the command setup.exe /download config.xml and press enter.

The Office 2019 installation files are downloaded and placed inside Office folder. The approx size of this folder after download is around 2.12 GB.

Step 4 – Deploy Office 2019 using SCCM

We will now deploy Office 2019 using SCCM. Launch SCCM console and create a new Application. On the General page, select Manually specify the application information. Click Next.

Specify some information about Office 2019 application and click Next.

Add a new deployment type and on General page, select Manually specify the deployment type information. Click Next.

Specify the content location. This is the folder where Office 2019 setup files are present along with setup and config files. Next, specify the installation program as per below format.

"\\server\share\setup.exe" /configure config.xml

Note – I will update the uninstall command at later point of time.

Since I will be deploying Office 2019 to both 32-bit and 64-bit OS, I am going to check the box “Run installation and uninstall program as 32-bit process on 64-bit clients”.

Adding a detection method is really important here. Add the Office 2019 detection method with following settings.

Setting Type – Registry

Hive – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key – SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

Value – VersionToReport

Enable “This registry key is associated with a 32-bit application on 64-bit systems”

Data Type – Version

Select “This registry setting must satisfy following rule to indicate the presence of this application”

Operator – Greater than or equal to

Value – 16.0.10336.20044

Click OK to close detection rule box. Click Next.

Specify the user experience settings for the application. Click Next.

Note that Office 2019 is compatible with Windows 10 OS only. Therefore you have to specify the OS requirements here. Click Next.

On the Completion page click Close. This will close create application wizard.

You have now packaged Office 2019 application. Finally deploy the Office 2019 to a device collection.

In my lab setup, i could install Office 2019 without any issues. Open the software center and select Office 2019 app and click Install. Monitor the installation progress by opening AppEnforce.log file.

Great guide – all of this works for me without issue. My only concern is future updates for Office 2019. I have read all the info MS posted about the clients connecting to their CDN for updates, but I was hoping to manage updates with WSUS. On my WSUS Server, I only see an an Office 365 Client in the “Products” list. Do you have any guidance on configuring updates? Many thanks!

Hi Prajwal, as always a great guide for all SCCM admins here. It worked perfectly fine. Just a question about updates here. It looks like the Office updates option is enabled by default. How do we go about to disable that and let SCCM deploy updates in future. Your time is much appreciated as always. Thanks.

The location where Office 2019 looks for updates is specified in the configuration.xml file that you use to deploy Office 2019 with the Office Deployment Tool. If you don’t want computers installed with Office 2019 to connect to the Office CDN to get updates, you can configure Office 2019 to get updates from a shared folder from within your internal network. You can also configure update settings for volume licensed versions of Office 2019 by using Group Policy.

Can that GPO be pointing to my SCCM SUP and the updates be pushed via SCCM same as we did in older version of Office products? Any specific GPO that I should be looking for? Thanks again for your time.

Wondering what the effect of installing Office 2019 on an existing Office 365 installation. I’m guessing the Detection Logic will allow the installation based on Version but will Office 2019 uninstall Office 365 to you knowledge?

Hi. Great guide. Was able to set up Office 2019 in my lab. Just wondering how to deploy the updates to this. We clearly will not want Internet Updates but rather update via SCCM if that’s offered. Having some slight issues with adding all languages

There won’t be much updates for Office 2019, there shall be only security updates. I am sure the future updates can be still deployed via SCCM. May i know what issues are you facing wrt adding languages ?.

At the moment with application languages where it remains en-US only despite having added French and German too. For the proofing tool it works … but still experimenting 🙂 I’m sure might just be a space too much somewhere.

Another day another issue 🙂 … Installation works fine now … all languages added as main application language and also proof reading. But how the hell do you remove this product? 🙂 I tried an uninstall command which uninstalled one of the three languages only … checked the full MS deployment doc and could not really find much about it …

According to Microsoft, The Office 365 Management section should allow you to deploy and manage Office 2019. But it does not appear to be updated with this capability yet. Will you cover this method when it is updated? This seems the most logical way to deploy it from what I can see? All my customers are VL, so no Office 365. Therefore never used the 365 management interface.